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Thursday, March 17, 2011

We are witnessing in the last few weeks a new phenomenon in North Africa and the Middle East. It is the power of the common man to use a massive peaceful crowd to overcome a despotic ruler. Gandhi’s “Salt March” was a forerunner, and, to be sure, the Eastern countries in Europe had the Velvet Revolution against Communism, but these were not as clearly defined as what is happening in North Africa. Here the composite Aquarian rule of the Common Man is placed against its opposite sign Leo, the single ruler. Thus begins the New Age in historical terms. Nation after nation, starting with Tunisia, has provided massive rivers of humanity that moved as one to protest against single entrenched dictators; Ben Ali, Mubarak, Ghadafi and others.

The Latin quote which is the motto of the USA, and on every dollar bill, translates as “Out of many, one,” and was also used symbolically previously by the Roman Empire, which had a bundle of arrows called the fasces tied together, giving rise years later to the term “fascist.”

At another level, the United Nations, and the European Union (EU) function as one out of many.

Those are all political examples, but the same process can be discerned in large business companies, universities, government branches in many countries. The USA, however, is a triad of checks and balances: the judicial, legislative, and the executive branches, headed by a single president, who nevertheless is subject to the people, as Clinton demonstrated . . .

Day by day, at present, history is unfolding this new phenomenon. It deserves our attention. The internet, Facebook, etc. are all abstract communities in which we participate without personal contact. The reality of the “other” is a matter of personal projection. Take a certain journalist: you read his pieces, hear his voice on the radio, and you form an imaginary man to fill in what’s missing. Then one day, you finally see his picture and are amazed at the difference from what you had imagined. Multiply this phenomenon by a billion and the unreality of what one thinks is going on and what really is becomes daunting.

Mother Teresa put it succinctly: I believe in person to person and God is in everyone. Aquarius believes in the latter but forgets the importance of person to person. You pay a toll and a little green light comes on with Thank You! An Aquarian guru I knew signed all his computer mail “with heartfelt love.” An Aquarian author I knew was writing a book about the seven mysteries of the universe, but forgot to water his horse, which sickened. As I myself have Aquarius rising, I have spent a lifetime trying to be practical! A need, something my very practical husband Walter finally conveyed to me. His method was very subtle: he never criticized me. No, but he would become very, very silent and when I noticed this, I had to ask – only then would he give the reason. This was very helpful actually because by asking I opened myself to receive the reprimand! Always followed, to be sure, by an affectionate hug.

We really only had two fights in eighteen years. The first was when we moved our joint belongings and discovered the number of musical records we both had. I said the long shelf was for his, and he said no, it was for mine. Aargh! In the end, there was room for both. The second argument was over the virtue or lack of it, of the Emperor Charlemagne! He was for me, a wise and heroic hero. In fact, when Germany invaded Holland in WW II I dreamt he was in a telephone booth and I was banging on the glass shouting, “What are we going to do?!!” For Walter, who grew up in Germany, Charlemagne was “the bloody Saxon butcher” who invited the Scandinavian nobility to a banquet and proceeded to slaughter them, a tale I refused to believe on the grounds that the order came from someone else, a woman whose name escapes me at the moment.

Back to the topic! What the present media offers us is the opportunity to live a new commandment: Love thy neighbors, they are yourself! Even in a family, our relationships are basically the result of mutual complex projections. We serve as multiple masks to one another! As I have written before, many of our relationships are based upon opinion. I remember an experience in India, looking down at night at a corpse being burned on a ghat. Some dogs, whose eyes reflected the fire, were snatching bits of flesh and devouring them. I thought of the hounds of hell. The next morning, I saw the dogs and puppies again, and they were just pooches wagging friendly tails.

So E pluribus unum has a caveat: A chain is as strong as its weakest link. A river of humanity is subject to mob psychology. We desperately need to remember the importance of the unum’s responsibility.

I am reminded of the Hindu image of Indra’s Net. The net is held together with a jewel at each nexus, and each jewel reflects all the others! It seems a prophetic holistic symbol for the fractals of today.

If the dichotomy of the last Age of Pisces/[Virgo] was faith/reason, the individual vs the collective is indeed the dichotomy of our already-arrived Age of Aquarius/[Leo].

We can celebrate this in a form of “Instant Communion”: by making a circle holding hands and swaying back and forth three times chanting “Yum! Yum! Yum!” followed by “Hugs to the left and hugs to the right!” This always ends any meeting in laughter and delight. Try it, as many have, and enjoy. By the way, we tried this with over a hundred Tibetan orphans in Dharamsala in India, and they knew exactly what to do! So now we can truly say it has Tibetan links!